Each spring, the PMB community comes together to celebrate the accomplishments of its members, give special recognition to award-winners, and bid fond farewells to graduating students and others departing for their next adventures. After two years of COVID-related restrictions, we were finally able to come together in-person again to celebrate together and enjoy some ice cream!
‘The Scoop’ from the Department Head
It is almost summer, and it is time for another Ice Cream Social newsletter featuring some of the many successes that our departmental members have worked hard to achieve in the past year. The newsletter also highlights many of the individuals who are new to our department. It was great to see many of you at the Ice Cream Social event last week, our first in-person Ice Cream Social since the pandemic started. I look forward to more opportunities to gather as a department in the coming year.
I also want to congratulate all of the students who are graduating and wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors. I look forward to celebrating with you during the upcoming departmental graduation celebration. To all, I hope you have a great summer filled with vacations, relaxation, and ice cream.
-Bob Franks
Plant Biology Undergraduate Student Awards and Recognition
At the end of each academic year, the Undergraduate Program Committee gives awards to recognize exceptional graduating seniors and continuing students. For more information about the awards and recipients, please click on the name of the award.
Awards for Graduating Seniors
- Outstanding Academic Achievement in Plant Biology: Savannah Moore
- Outstanding Plant Biology Major: Emma Simpson
- CALS Outstanding Graduating Student Award: Emma Simpson
Awards for Continuing Students
- Larry A. Whitford Award: Grace Herring
- W. Scott and Mary Dell Chilton Undergraduate Research Award: Abigail Korenek
Recognition
- Genetics and Genomics Academy Summer Research Team Mini-Grant Award: Caroline Batten
- The Botany Club held regular in-person meetings throughout the 2021-2022 academic year. Meeting participants engaged in a number of activities organized by the club officers including: propagating plants for dorm and apartment living, a campus plant scavenger hunt, making plant “crafts” using natural products, pumpkin carving and painting, and the club’s annual plant/seed exchange. They also hosted multiple guest speakers and capped off the year with a daytrip to Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham.
The Plant Biology Undergraduate Program recognizes the hard work of this year’s Botany Club Officer Team:
President – Morgan Cantrell
Vice President – Sydney Buck
Secretary/Treasurer – Seline Pons
Agri-Life Council Representatives: Helen Nocito, Sallie Talyor-Parker (fall), and Jackson Cooper (spring)
The 2022-2023 Botany Club Officers are:
President – Jackson Cooper
Vice President – Sydney Buck
Secretary/Treasurer – Seline Pons
Agri-Life Council Representatives: Helen Nocito and Zoe Curtis
Plant Biology Graduate Student Awards and Recognition
Every year, the PMB Department recognizes the exemplary work of graduate students who have been awarded internal departmental awards, as well as external awards. For more information about the awards and recipients, please click on the name of the award.
Awards
- Martha Sue Sebastian Award: Tallis Donnelly
- Susan R. Vitello Award: Aurora Toennisson
- Catherine H. Beattie Fellowship in Conservation Horticulture from the Garden Club of America: Kira Lindelof
- Advances in Genome Biology and Technology Agriculture Conference Travel Award: Anna Yaschenko
- White Mountain Research Center Minigrant: Kaleb Goff
- Mary DeDecker Botanical Grant from the California Native Plant Society, Bristlecone Chapter: Kaleb Goff
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship: Melina Keighron
- Earl Core Grant from the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society: Merry Conlin
- Bruce & Tom Shinn Native Plant Research Grant (from North Carolina Native Plant Society): Merry Conlin
- Merry Conlin has been awarded a research grant from the Wetland Foundation in support of her master’s work on critically imperiled Ludwigia ravenii (Onagraceae).
- Asa Budnick was selected for the AgBioFEWS program
Recognition
- Kaleb Goff was recognized with an Honorable Mention for the 2022 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
- Anna Dye received third place recognition at the North Carolina Graduate Research and Policy Expo for her work with the UK consulate under the auspices of a National Science Policy Network SciDEAL Internship.
Masters of Microbial Biotechnology (MMB)
This Spring, the MMB program has 15 graduating students. These students completed and presented on their Capstone Projects.
Additionally, the MMB program partnered with several companies this semester: InSoma Bio, Galaxy Diagnostics, and Phaxtec. MMB students worked with these partner companies over the course of the semester and completed their Spring practicum projects. Thank you to all of our MMB partners for their continued support in providing meaningful industry-related experiences to our students through guest lectures and practicum projects!
Faculty Awards and Announcements
- Dr. Candace Haigler became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Dr. Cranos Williams was named a Goodnight Distinguished Professor in Agricultural Analytics
- Dr. Bill Hoffman was nominated for the Jackson Rigney International Service Award.
- Dr. Orlando Arguello-Miranda joined the department as an Assistant Professor.
- Dr. Ross Sozzani was promoted to full professor
Staff Announcements and Recognition
- Dwayne Barnes received the CALS Award for Excellence
- Lauren Gore recently joined the department staff as the Social Media and Communications Assistant. Lauren will be the source of PMB Twitter and LinkedIn posts, the newsletters, and website updates. Please email her (legore@ncsu.edu) if you have research announcements, activities or programs of interest that you would like to share on our social media or through a news post.
- The PMB department would also like to bid a fond farewell to our Social Media and Communications Assistant, Alex Goodnight. Thank you for all your contributions to the department and the PMB program. We wish her all the best working with the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative!
Lab Announcements and Publications
Alonso-Stepanova Lab
Please join the Alonso-Stepanova Lab in Congratulating the following teams from their Lab for receiving the Genetics and Genomics Academy Summer Research Team Mini-Grant Award:
- Matt Neubauer (postdoc) and Alex Marchi (undergrad)
- Hao Chen (postdoc) and Amanda Merkel (undergrad)
- Chengsong Zhao (research scholar) and Caroline Batten (undergrad)
Additionally, Congratulations to 2 postdocs from the Lab, Hao Chen and Mario Fenech, for both receiving the Genetics and Genomics Academy travel grant to attend the 2022 Plant Biology Conference in Portland, Oregon.
The Lab has four new publications to share:
- Chen H., Bullock Jr. D.A., Alonso J.M., and Stepanova A.N. (2021) To fight or to grow: the balancing role of ethylene in plant abiotic stress responses. MDPI Plants 11(1), 33 doj: 10.3390/plants11010033
- Chen H., Alonso J.M., and Stepanova A.N. (2021) A Ribo-seq method to study genome-wide translational regulation in plants. Environmental responses in plants. Duque P. and Szakonyi D. (Ed). Humana Press Totawa New Jersey. Methods Mol Biol (in press)
- Stepanova A.N. (2021) Plant biology research: what is next? Front Plant Sci Sep 30;12:749104 doi: 10.3389/fpls.2021.749104
- Qiao H. and Stepanova A.N. (2021) Towards deciphering the molecular basis of plant phenotypic plasticity. Curr Opin Plant Biol 2021 Oct;63:102107 doi: 10.1016/j.pbi.2021.102107
Bruno-Bárcena Lab
The Bruno-Bárcena Lab would like to welcome two new graduate students; Trenton Owens, a first-year student in the Microbiology Ph.D. program, and Madison Moore, a third-year student in the Functional Genomics Ph.D. program. Both are members of the Genetics and Genomics Fellowship (Trenton – 2021 cohort and Madison – 2020 cohort).
Also, Congratulations to José and his lab for winning a second place Daugherty Endowment Awards at the eGames this spring for Mammae Biosciences Inc.
Haigler Lab
Ali Wrobleski, an M.R. student, has joined the Haigler lab and is assisting with research on the control of cotton fiber cell shape. She is a teaching assistant for the department.
The Haigler Lab would also like to Congratulate Ben Graham, a PMB alumn and postdoc in the Haigler Lab, who was selected as the winner of the “Cheers to You! CSSC employee award!” from the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. This award recognizes outstanding work among the department’s employees.
Also, Congratulations to Ethan Pierce, the Haigler Lab manager and another PMB alumn, for receiving the 2022 CALS Excellence in Safety Award! Ethan is one of two people in the college to receive this award, which recognizes his ‘above and beyond’ work to train users and manage the departmental autoclave in the Dept. of Crop and Soil Sciences.
Hawkes Lab
The Hawkes Lab is welcoming several new postdocs: Mara DeMers, Noah Luecke, and Luciana Bachega; and several new research technicians: Devlyn Anderson, Kimberlea Harris, and Shelby Williford.
Krings Lab
The Krings Lab is welcoming several new undergraduates: Elijah Bradshaw (Environmental Science) will be working on comparative habitat assessment of Ptelea trifoliata, Hannah Cabell (Environmental Science/Plant Biology) will be working on vegetative identification of sapling pines of Piedmont grasslands, and Claire Melvin (Natural Resources) will be working on rare species surveys with focus on Scutellaria nervosa.
The Krings Lab would also like to welcome a new undergraduate to the Herbarium: Clancy Larmour (Life Sciences), will be assisting with mounting and digitization.
The Krings Lab has two new publications to share:
- Szakacs, A.D., A. Krings, and T.R. Wentworth. In press. Shade-tolerance classification of the upland herbaceous flora of the Carolina and Virginia Piedmont. American Midland Naturalist.
- Lindelof, K. and A. Krings. 2022. Capsule-seed allometric relationships Ludwigia ravenii (Onagraceae), a critically imperiled, wetland-obligate. Castanea 86: 278–282.
Long Lab
The Long Lab recently received an NSF Award using mathematical modeling approaches to study iron homeostasis in plants, “Collaborative Research: Living on the Edge – Quantitative Systems Physiology of Iron Homeostasis”. This is a collaborative award between NCSU and the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Congratulations!
Miller Lab
The Miller Lab has two new publications to share:
- Jin X, Miller ES, Lindsey JS. Natural Product Gene Clusters in the Filamentous Nostocales Cyanobacterium HT-58-2. Life (Basel). 2021. doi: 10.3390/life11040356.
- Jin X, Zhang Y, Zhang R, Nguyen KU, Lindsey JS, Miller ES. Identification of Putative Biosynthetic Gene Clusters for Tolyporphins in Multiple Filamentous Cyanobacteria. Life (Basel). 2021. doi: 10.3390/life11080758.
Petry Lab
Please join the Petry Lab in Congratulating Melina Keighron on her NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Award!
The Petry Lab would also like to welcome their new Research Specialist, Nicole Esch.
Sheth Lab
The Sheth Lab would like to welcome their new undergraduate research assistant, Sophie Meng.
Congratulations to Dr. Seema Sheth for her recent grant award:
- NSF, DEB, 2022-2025, Total: $1,452,695 ($509,734 to NCSU). Collaborative Research: BEE: Integrating evolutionary genetics and population ecology to detect contemporary adaptation to climate change across a species range (lead PI). co-PIs: Chris Muir (U. of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa), Lluvia Flores-Rentería (San Diego State U.), Jason Sexton (U. of California, Merced), and Jeff Diez (U. of Oregon).
The Lab has new publications, led by former lab members, to share:
- Wooliver, R., Vtipilthorpe, E.E., Wiegmann, A.M., and Sheth, S.N. 2022. A viewpoint on ecological and evolutionary study of plant thermal performance curves in a warming world. In press, AoB Plants. https://doi.org/10.1093/aobpla/plac016
- Querns, A., Wooliver, R., Vallejo-Marín, M. and Sheth, S.N. 2022. The evolution of thermal performance in native and invasive populations of Mimulus guttatus. Evolution Letters 6: 136-148.
The Sheth Lab would also like to recognize Kaleb Goff for his multiple awards, as well as a paper that was published based on his undergrad research project at UC Santa Cruz:
Sozzani Lab
The Sozzani Lab would like to welcome several new members. Julianne Nolan has joined the Lab as a Lab Manager. Jasmine Peace is an undergraduate student that has joined the lab and is working with STEPS in the REU summer program to research increasing phosphate availability in plants. Lastly, Thomas Nguyen has returned to the Sozzani Lab after receiving a M.S. in Plant Biology and completing a Masters Program in the BESE (Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division) at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology).
The Sozzani Lab is also bidding farewell to Aitch Hunt, who recently graduated with 2 bachelors degrees in Art & Design and Plant Biology. Aitch has been accepted into TU Delft’s M.S. Integrated Product Design Program.
The Lab has multiple new publications to share:
- Roszak, P., Heo , J., Blob, B., et. al. (2021). Cell-by-Cell Dissection of Phloem Development Links a Maturation Gradient to Cell Specialization. Science, Vol 374, Issue 6575.
- Betegón-Putze, I., Mercadal, J., Bosch, N., Planas-Riverola, A., Marquès-Bueno, M., Vilarrasa-Blasi, J., Frigola, D., Burkart, R. C., Martínez, C., Conesa, A., Sozzani, R., Stahl, Y., Prat, S., Ibañes, M., Caño-Delgado, A. I. (2021). Precise transcriptional control of cellular quiescence by BRAVO/WOX5 complex in Arabidopsis roots. Molecular systems biology, 17(6), e9864. https://doi.org/10.15252/msb.20209864
- Clark, N. M., Nolan, T. M., Wang, P., Gaoyuan, S., Montes, C., Valentine, C. T., Guo, H., Sozzani, R., Yin, Y., Walley, J. W. (2021). Integrated omics networks reveal the temporal signaling events of brassinosteroid response in Arabidopsis. Nature Communications, 12(1) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26165-3
- Adhikari, T. B., Aryal, R., Redpath, L. E., Van den Broeck, L., Ashrafi, H., Philbrick, A. N., Jacobs, R. L., Sozzani, R., & Louws, F. J. (2022). RNA-Seq and Gene Regulatory Network Analyses Uncover Candidate Genes in the Early Defense to Two Hemibiotrophic Colletorichum spp. in Strawberry. Frontiers in genetics, 12, 805771. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2021.805771
- Van den Broeck, L., Schwartz, M.F., Krishnamoorthy, S., Spurney, R.J., Abderamane Tahir, M., Melvin, C., Gobble, M., Peters, R., Muhammad, A., Li, B., Stuiver, M., Horn, T., Sozzani, R. (2022). Establishing a reproducible approach for the controllable deposition and maintenance of plants cells with 3D bioprinting. bioRxiv
- Thomas, H., Van den Broeck, L., Spurney, R., Sozzani, R., Frank, M. (2022) Gene regulatory networks for compatible versus incompatible grafts identify a role for SlWOX4 during junction formation. The Plant Cell, Volume 34, Issue 1, Pages 535–556, https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koab246
- Krishnamoorthy, S., Schwartz, M.F., Van den Broeck, L., Hunt, A., Horn, T., Sozzani, R.(2021). Tissue Regeneration with Hydrogel Encapsulation: A Review of Developments in Plants and Animals. BioDesign Research
- Schwartz, M.F., Peters, R., Hunt, A.M., Abdul-Matin, A., Van den Broeck, L., Sozzani, R. (2021) Divide and Conquer: The Initiation and Proliferation of Meristems. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 40:2, 147-156, DOI: 10.1080/07352689.2021.1915228
- Spurney, R., Schwartz, M., Gobble, M., Sozzani, R., & Van den Broeck, L. (2021). Spatiotemporal gene expression profiling and network inference: A roadmap for analysis, visualization, and key gene identification. Modeling transcriptional regulation (pp. 47-65). New York, NY: Springer US. doi:10.1007/978-1-0716-1534-8_4
- Van den Broeck, L., Gobble, M., Sozzani, R. (2021). Quantifying intercellular movement and protein stoichiometry for computational modeling. Methods in Molecular Biology: Plasmodesmata.
Xie Lab
Please join the Xie Lab in wishing Congratulations to Emily Ye, an undergraduate student in the lab, for winning the Spring 2022 Research Award from the Office of Undergraduate Research. Emily won funds for her project: Characterization of Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Metabolite Profiles in Various End Products of Green Teas.
Plant and Microbial Biology Spring 2022 Graduates
The PMB department commends you all on your resilience and perseverance in completing your degrees. Congratulations Graduates! Good luck on all your future endeavors.
As COVID restrictions are lifted and life returns to a more “normal” routine, PMB continues to move forward. Please stay safe and have a wonderful summer! Thank you to all who contributed to our Ice Cream Social and Newsletter this year!
From the PMB Social Committee: Dr. Chad Jordan, Ms. Anne-Marie Noblitt, Ms. Rachel Clark, Dr. Alex Goodnight, and Committee Co-Chairs, Ms. Catherine Freeman and Dr. Tom Wentworth
